What was billed as the greatest opening weekend in college football history truly lived up to the hype. Due to this, looking at this week’s rankings compared to last week’s is wild. Tennessee won (in ugly fashion) and dropped from 9 to 17, Texas and Wisconsin jumped from unranked to spots 11 and 10 respectively. All of this happened in just the first week of play.
While the rankings may have changed a lot, do not let them fool you. Teams will make big jumps and drops for a few more weeks and rankings do not mean anything until the playoff committee comes out with theirs. Just because a team lost now, doesn’t mean they are out of the playoff race. Just because Oklahoma lost to Houston, doesn’t mean they are not going to make the playoffs (because they are going to, Baker Mayfield will show that this team deserves it after they beat Ohio State week 3. Yes, quote me on that). Same goes for LSU, even though they will not make the playoffs.
If you believed the original AP top 25 then you have no prior knowledge of College football. Sometimes the people that create these rankings are just using things like recruitment classes or potential to rank these teams, like they do with Tennessee every year.
Upsets are not unusual, especially early on. Just look at 2014 when number nine South Carolina lost in a blowout to number 21 Texas A&M. Or how about 2015 when number 21 Stanford and number 15 Arizona State both lost? Upsets are bound to happen every single week. That is why college football is so beloved. Just, do not let the number in front of a team’s name make you think they are invincible. In all honesty, it means they are vulnerable.
In the next few weeks, more upsets are bound to happen. Do not always bet on the ranked team. Do not think “oh it is an easy win this week.” I bet that’s what Tennessee thought when they almost lost to the greatest upset team of all time: Appalachian state (just look at Appalachian state beating Michigan in 2007 when Michigan was ranked number 5).
(Photo: https://www.flickr.com/photos/soonerguys/)